


Blood × Dust

by SilverFliesInBlueSugar



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chara (Undertale) Has Issues, Chara (Undertale) Has Their Own Body, Cutting, F/M, Female Chara (Undertale), Guilt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nice Chara (Undertale), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Undertale Genocide Route, Recovery, Retelling, Selectively Mute Frisk (Undertale), Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexless Frisk, Shipper Frisk (Undertale), Slow Burn, Soul Sex, Suicide Attempt, The Chara/Sans isn't a big focus, suicide attempt recovery, the chara/frisk/sans tag is not meant to be poly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16047596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverFliesInBlueSugar/pseuds/SilverFliesInBlueSugar
Summary: Chara can't comprehend recovery anymore.---After reseting from a genocide run, Chara can feel. Touch. Interact.This changes things drastically.And for nothing moreso than her mental state.





	1. Prologue

Press.

Drag.

Methodical. Clean. Chaos.

Chara's lips twisted into a humourless little smile.

Again.

Again.

A-again...

The smile dropped as she began to feel lightheaded.

Agai-

She passed out, knife slipping from her arm before hitting the floor.

The next morn, she awoke to rapping on the bathroom door.

"C-chara, are you alright? You've been in there all night!"

The young girl jumped up, trying to ignore her surrogate mother's pleas for her to tell her what was going on as she stifled her wounds with toilet paper and wiped away the small pools of blood on the floor.

Her head snapped up as the door was forced open loudly.

Her blood froze.

Toriel stood there horrified, red eyes filled with disbelief as she stared at her adoptive child, a mere 12 years of age and normally so sweet, leant against the wall with unnatural amounts of blood coming from self inflicted lacerations in her arms, only stifled by the sheets apon sheets of toilet paper that had been shoved against.

Chara felt time slow around her.

"M-mum, i-"

She was swept into a painful hug.

Knives were either dulled or left too high for Chara to get to. Any tools were blunted. Fires were kept from her. Her stats were regularly checked.

And until the buttercups, she had remained clean... To an extent.

Then...

Genocide.


	2. RESET

When they appear in the flowers after the devastating reset, Chara could feel things.

'....the timeline's really screwed up, huh?'

Frisk stared at her in something akin to awe as she stretched, red eyes bright in wonder as she walked and felt the flowers crunch underneath her feet.

These last timelines she had been a ghost. A prescence.

How...?

Frisk beamed, slanted eyes sparkling with how overcome they felt.

Then Chara froze, a sort of horror crossing her face.

"Sans remembers. We'll have to face him. I'LL have to face him.." she managed out. Frisk's body had taken the fall for everything, and while the dark skinned teen rarely if ever complained, Chara could feel the echoes of the pain rock through her spirit when the impact of an attack was particularly bad.  
Feeling it in person..?

She shuddered.

Frisk took her hand in their own slightly coarser one, and she relaxed at the warmth coming from it, trying her best to hide her fear and pain behind one of her many masks.

This one was a smile.

"Come on.." she mumbled, but before she walked she frowned at Frisk. "No more death. No more resets"

Frisk nodded. "No more resets" they spoke quietly. Chara felt like a weight had been lifted off of her chest, albeit a minor one. 

They encountered Flowey just as they always did.

Well... This time was obviously different.

The sentient flowers seemed to double take at the sight of his partner in life and death in the flesh, and a string of stutters came from him, unable to form cohesive sentences.

Chara moved behind Frisk, her throat closing up, and Flowey seemed to snap out of it. He reverted to his script, although with clear hesitance, and was, per usual, knocked back by Toriel.

"What a horrible creature, attacking a poor, innocent-" her eyes locked onto Chara and she froze. "My... Child?"

The brunette raised her hand shakily. "H-hi mum..."

She was swept into a tight hug immediately, Toriel breathing out so much, unkept promises, regrets, what-ifs, hows and so, so many 'I missed you'

She felt tears streak down her constantly flushed cheeks, and could see from the corner of her peripheral Frisk smiling slightly. Not the evil, manic grin they had whilst slaying a foe, but the gentle, sweet smile of a child.

Chara wished she smiled like that more often.

She couldn't explain to her adoptive mother why she was alive, but she did shakily introduce a silent Frisk. 

The journey through the ruins was slow and more calm than the last timelines. The very first times they had been left alone by Toriel and had to fend for themself as they made their way to her home. During genocide they had spent their time hacking at anything that moved.

Now Toriel seemed stuck to Chara's side, refusing to let her wander off at all, warm fuzzy hand completely encompassing Chara's comparatively frail one.

When they came to the home Chara couldn't resist throwing herself onto one of the twin beds, pulling the bedsheet over herself as a small smile smothered her face. Toriel watched from the doorway with nostalgia and love overflowing from her like an aura, and led Frisk off, trembling, to get cinnamon-butterscotch pie.

After some time indulging in the past Chara sobered up. Did she... Deserve this?

She.. They... They had killed everyone.

Toriel. Countless times. Asgore. Asriel. Papyrus. Sans..

Too many to count. Too many to list. Her head spun.

Frisk had often let her possess they body and she remembered in those sparse times that she relished the feeling of power and control that thrummed through her veins, was addicted to the thrill when her stats ticked one number higher.

Control. She was... Obsessed with it.

Those were even her final words she spoke to Frisk in the first genocidal timeline, when Frisk had refused to finish what she had started.

'Since when were you the one in control?'

She had savoured the fear on her partner's face.

And then it had reset.

Frisk did it again.

Reset.

Again.

Again.

The repetition.

The lust for power.

It went on so long that Chara forgot that once Frisk had been peaceful, that there had once been a pacifistic timeline wherein everyone had been spared and/or befriended.

When she had been able to joke with Frisk, tease them about their now faded crush on Sans, make puns, sarcastic quips on their surroundings...

The Frisk now was certainly better than genocide Frisk, but they were by no means pacifist Frisk. She wasn't who she had been before.

She felt... Tainted.

And so did Chara.

She shivered and hugged herself at the memory of the hatred consuming her, succumbing to the LV as she let her mind be taken by the emptiness. The inky like substance coating her body.

And then the judgement hall, being thrown against razor sharp bone ends again and again, ad nauseum, on and on and on...

Until she had overrid Frisk's control and finally finished the skeleton that was the final line of defence for Monsterkind and Humankind alike.

'Papyrus... Do you want anything?'

Chara ran into the bathroom and threw up.


End file.
